Writing for Others
JA
September 13
(via)
I said in ‘Slapstick’ that [my sister] was the person I wrote for – that every successful creative person creates with an audience of one in mind. That’s the secret of artistic unity. Anybody can achieve it, if he or she will make something with only one person in mind. I didn’t realize that she was the person I wrote for until after she died.
Kurt VonnegutI don’t envision any “ideal readers” – or any readers at all, I suppose. My imagination doesn’t work in that way. My concentration is turned inward, upon the work itself—beyond its perimeters, I can’t speculate.
Joyce Carol Oates
Two very different views by two very talented writers – all on the question of whether (and to what extent) authors should keep their potential audience in mind when writing.
I’m curious about the sheer contrast here. As this article by Jed Perl points out, writing is an incredibly private act that sometimes has very public consequences. The smallest, briefest sentence jotted down when alone in one’s room or study is uncontrollable after going to print – intentions, meanings, motivations and inspirations are all fair game. This is of course as it should be, yet does this mean that we should be ever-conscious of a future readership when going about the delicate art of extracting ideas? And if so whose version?
On one level, I can see that a general idea about one’s audience is necessary. Is it, for example, YA or children’s lit, or adult? Educational, travel-logue or fiction? Decisions about this might be required to influence the tone, the language, the length and structure. Yet beyond this, I’ve never really been able to cope with keeping a potential audience in mind. One reason is for fear of censoring myself into a year-long bout of writer’s block, and the other is because, really, it’s an impossible task. I know nothing about what others might think of this character or that scene, and nothing about how their own experiences might impress upon the words. If I do keep a reader in mind, it’s probably just an inverse of my more critical self. The one that might ask, for example, does this sound right, or is it believable? Are you taking the easy way out? Or, more candidly, I’m bored, rewrite it again.
Another aspect also comes into play when writers go about attempting that all-important, all-intimidating second novel. George Dunford has an excellent essay on this in the current Sept Meanjin, where he profiles a number of authors grappling with the task. Darren Williams, who won the Vogel in 1994 for Swimming in Silk, mentioned for one the difficulty of keeping your audience at a distance once you’ve been exposed to the gauntlet of reviews, festival appearances and other publicity:
Instead of you being at home writing there’s this whole publishing industry and you have to start thinking about who’s buying this book you’re writing. It’s hard not to think of that once you’ve been exposed to that business side of it
Helen Garner had something similar to say when interviewed by Ramona Koval many years back:
You write your first book and it comes from somewhere in you that’s fresh and untainted by a relationship with the demands of the outside world. And you’re never going to be that fresh again, you’re never going to be that innocent again and you might as well face it.
So then comes the moment when you want to write the next thing, and your mind and your consciousness and some sort of space between you and the page is clogged with what you think the rest of the world thinks of you, or what you think the rest of the world thinks you should do next. And it’s like hearing bad static on the radio, you can’t think or be calm, or breathe or see anything, or hear a bird sing or anything, you’ve just got this racket going on in your head. And there’s only one way out of that of course and that is just to write a little word, and you write another little word, and then you’ve got a sentence, and then you’ve got a paragraph…
All in all, I’m probably inclined to agree with George Dunford’s conclusion that ‘[s]uccessful novelists manage to ignore the external static of audiences, publishers and critics’ and the they must ‘write for themselves’. But what about others? Do you keep an audience in mind, and if so can you block out the static?
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Comments
13 Sep 10 at 10:30
I think I do it unconsciously, write with a specific group of people in mind, whom I respect and hope they’d like it. I think, for me, it has to do with whom I respect politically, more than in terms of writing because writing is about the ideas more than the words – but now I’m thinking that I might be preaching to the converted, or is that my niche?
...13 Sep 10 at 11:10
Interesting that you post this now, Jes. I had a conversation with a good friend over the weekend, talking shop about writing and creativity. It dawned on me during that conversation that for around a year or so I’ve been writing not only with audiences in mind, but with publications in mind.
Coming to that realisation gave me a bit of a jolt. But I think I’ve got a handle on what I’ll be doing to try and release the mindset that I’ve inadvertently adopted. Because at the end of the day, writing for my own enjoyment is, obviously, what I enjoy most. Not writing for the glory of recognition that is associated with publication (not that it isn’t nice and all ;P).
...16 Sep 10 at 13:40
Interesting topic. I will usually start off with a line that I get hooked on and follow the lead from there to see where it takes me. I rarely write with other people in mind, unless I am making an argument and want to make it logically watertight. I write what comes to me, what bugs me until I put pen to paper.
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